


Above Water

by SaintSanguine



Category: None - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Sorry to disappoint, although I like to think he is, but hey that might change, but then I put a lot of effort into it and it turned out really good, but yeah I promise Harikoto isn't this gay, it was going to be a crack fic but THEN, no actual sex scene by the way just so you know, yeah I sorta wrote this on a whim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 00:12:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14272626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintSanguine/pseuds/SaintSanguine
Summary: This is a bit of a crack fic based upon my own character, Mentium, and a character named Harikoto who I love and who my bestie has so kindly lent to me. This was written several years ago, and only now have I thought to actually do something with it. If you're interested in Mentium, awesome. I'll probably put up more of him at some point. If you're interested in Harikoto, check out Danielle at her Pinterest: https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fpin.it%2Fjb5f6mulgiw353&h=ATPluk_YbLOIAv4-shP7eBe4rhDmGf8lY8vXdJqtLujFLQ7qkg-I_sbhzxf-NrKbdjG_77Ir3Q0sjcMPpJoXJGXNFEsgKTMPpyVknJx1b0pOQbLfMgesdzmIMAK5HIQ&s=1 And... yes, that is her Pinterest board for Harikoto. It's kinda great.





	Above Water

    There it was. The Cove.  
    He had been searching his whole life, with his father looking before him. Trapped for eternity as a youth, his life had been long. But now, he gazed out over that frightful rock that they all said was circled day and night by those beautiful, murderous sirens.  
    A cold smile held his lips. It was impossible not to grin. Even the crew, in all their ignorance, felt the importance of what was to happen. When the captain looked like this, it was difficult not to know.  
When he looked like this: like the wind blew for him. It tousled his navy jacket, too fine an English admiral’s jacket for a lowly pirate. It played with his dark curls, caressed his angular face. And his rosy eyes shone out mirthfully as a jolly lad from the shadow of his tricorn hat, though not an ounce of true joy remained in his capacity. No, all the captain had now some sort of cruelty closely akin to childishness.  
    The captain licked his lips and stalked out to the railing, feeling his second in command come close at his elbow. “This is the day, boys.” His raspy voice etched the words into the air. “We’ve found them. Look there,” and a thin finger pointed into the distance at the massive cave that loomed ever larger. The smile broke into a grin as some of his mates whooped. “Now we’ve got some big fish to catch, and we don’t even know quite what they look like. Th-”  
    A smart-mouthed sailor opened the unfortunately sized orifice. “Well I imagine they be the on’y fishes with breasts, cap’n!” He grinned at his own clever joke, but not another sailor cracked so much as a smirk. No one interrupts the captain.  
    The tallest man on board, a hairy, muscular ginger who never spoke, seized the man by the arm.  
    “Lemme go, stupid bastard!” The scrawny, scurvy-ravaged Brit struggled fruitlessly.  
    “Seems we have a volunteer, here.”  
    “…Wha?”  
    The captain smirked. “We all know what the ladyfish do. We can’t very well catch one without bait, can we?” Once again the wind seemed to serve the pirate, and the ropes of the dinghy swung mirthfully in the breeze.  
    “Over the edge with the shitsop!” the girl at the captain’s arm left his side, directing a group to haul down one of the rescue boats. The pirate who had spoken, on the other hand, was entering a blind panic as he struggled to get away from the wall of a man. “Oi, keep ‘im still!”  
    Anchor was dropped half a kilometer offshore. The small vessel was lowered to the edge, the pirate tied into it. He was given a pistol with six bullets, the captain figuring they could at least wound one of the devilfish with it. His left hand was sliced open and drops of blood released into the water before the dinghy hit the waves. A fishing net was thrown from the side of the ship, and two more rigged from prow and stern to create a sort of cage held in place by iron hooks on board and weights at the bottom of the sea. Anything that swam into it would be trapped when the entrance closed and could be hauled up easily onto the deck.  
    The captain’s smile remained as they waited.

    Small waves lapped at the crystal walls of the inner part of the cave. Calcium daggers drooped anxiously from the ceiling, questioning where their next kill was. The seawater stank of rotting meat. Nothing lived in that hollow save bacteria and one lithe creature, who sat humming and stringing pieces from a pile of bones picked clean. A sickening crunching sound echoed in the depths alongside the sweet shanty’s melody as an eye socket was popped from a week-old skull, the flesh eaten straight off the cranium (as evidenced by sharp tooth marks that scraped a pattern onto the bone) and the teeth pulled off and sorted in a different pile.  
    As it was, the jagged-edged socket had a bit of seaweed tied securely around the edge and strung to another on the long chain, nearly long enough to be a belt of sorts. Jewelry of the same macabre nature decorated the creature’s body: the canine teeth of eight or so men, a hole drilled through the unhealthy enamel with a nail, made into a bracelet; finger bones roped end-to-end in a cuff around the merman’s bicep; necklaces from seaweed, bits of gold, bits of jewels, bits of rope, molars, and finger bones crossed like a mockery of the Jolly Rodger; and in the same manners, pieces lashed together like pauldrons hung over the merman’s shoulders. Rings he’d scavenged, as well as those he’d made, glinted on his fingers.  
    He stared silently at his handiwork, having impressed himself. His red tongue ran over shark’s teeth as he thought about how well the last hunt had gone, interrupting the song only momentarily before resuming. Singlehandedly he’d taken down the crew of the commercial fishing vessel. As each body had fallen into the water due to his tempest, he’d dispatched them and thrown them back aboard the ship he’d wrecked with his thrashing tail and makeshift tools.  
    Then he had grabbed a rope and pulled the entire thing back to the shore, mooring it behind a wall at the mouth of the cave, where no passersby could see it. No human sailors would flee his shore, thinking another crew waited to ambush them.  
    How good it was to finally be alone, to reap for himself all the fruits of his efforts.  
    No one to carry but himself.  
    He relaxed onto the rocks worn smooth by a thousand different backs sliding down the rocks day by day. He had food, he’d nearly completed this project… There was little to be done before it was finished.     His tail flicked up a cascade in a lazy motion. _I am bored._  
    A rumbling growl filled the cove as the beautiful sound faded. There was nothing to do but eat and sleep when there were no sailors. It was a different sort of hunger, this lust for blood. It was the sort of hunger that drove men mad for that which they desired. He changed his song, begging without words for the arrival of new prey.  
    A black claw stirred the water, thick with tannin from the mangroves further along the beach. But there was also…  
    His pale hand dipped under the choppy little waves, lifting water with not just the dry essence, but… His head snapped up, pitch gaze locked on the mouth of the cave. _Is there already…? Not possible._ Excitement made his heart race, but no such happy emotion showed on his face. This was the instinct of a killing animal. It saw motion, it smelled blood, it hunted.  
    The creature reared up and arched its back to dive deep beneath the waves, darting forward at the cave’s floor to swim rapidly out to sea.

    The pirate in the boat had been out in the sun for hours now. He laid, exhausted, with his head propped up on the bow. His arm rested on the edge with the pistol loose in his hand. “God he’p me…” he muttered, looking around blearily. He knew the captain wouldn’t be so impatient as to reel him in early; he was dispensable anyway. He was too physically drained to continue screaming, fighting, or begging.  
At least, that was what he thought until he felt the first bump at the bottom of the dinghy. A scream unnaturally shrill for a man ripped from his lungs, making some of the other crew members laugh.  
    The captain certainly did.

    The merman backpedaled, then launched himself at the dinghy once more, thins time at full speed. He dare not show his face for fear of being shot; however, were the gun to fall into the water, it would be useless. He was well aware of this as he overturned the small craft, dumping both squealing pirate and useless pistol into the brine. It was with a savage grin that he pushed the pirate into the seafloor before rising once again to head towards the ship. At least, he thought that was the plan until he neared the large boat and noticed panicked fish fleeing in confusion. They surrounded him, blocking his vision in the already murky water, until it was too late, and he was caught in the fisherman’s net. An enraged roar pushed itself to the surface, but it manifested only as bubbles.  
And so he was hauled up in the nets along with so many dumb fish.  
    Ire was principal in his emotions, but humiliation was a close second as his situation was brought to bear, and he was removed from the net and bound to the faux land of a ship.  
Ropes pulled his wrists out to either side; his tail was wrapped and tied to cargo bolts on the floor. The creature, while still viciously resisting, appeared near helpless belly-up on the ground. Little did the pirates know his jagged scales were already scraping away at the old ropes.  
    The captain stood over him, grinning, as the lowers finished securing the halfling’s bonds and eight pistols trained on the monster’s head. “I didn’t know male mer-creatures existed. Mind telling us where your pretty little sisters are?”  
    As hatred coiled in his gut, the sea monster was willing to do little more than glare threateningly at the pirate, dagger-like, pearly fangs glinting in the early rays of dawn: the most unsettling snarl the sea scum had yet seen. “Are you quite secure in your decision to tie me here?”  
    “OH, it does speak!” the captain chortled, and most of the rest of the crew laughed nervously with him. Some superstitious sailors threw their hats on the ground and spat over the edge. One bowed his head to his folded fingers, praying. “Tell me, Devilfish, where’s the rest of your kin? You see, my boys and I are out hunting for something about as valuable as your blood.” He knelt on the worn floorboards to lean in close over the mercreature’s face. “For your sake, you’ll give them up. I know your kind to be selfish, if pretty lil’ things.”  
    The merman’s sneer only grew more malignant. “You dare make a mockery of my heritage. Look me in the eye, human filth!” he cried, struggling with renewed ferocity at the ropes. Pitch, sopping hair fell over eyes darker than the depths, black as the void. The gills over his throat pumped fruitlessly. The sails on his back strained against the wood it was forced against, spines scraping audibly with a horrid groaning noise. The tip of his tail slapped the floor in agitation, its blade at the end of the sail threatening any who came too close. “Your ignorant kind thinks it can hunt me. I, who reaped the lives of hundreds of sailors. I, who ended those undeserving to live by my own hand. I, who purified my race of the lowly, unworthy lifeforms befouling the waters. _You think you hunt me?_ ” The thrashing ceased for a moment as the merman’s neck strained up at the captain’s face, needle-rimmed jaws parting like an angler’s. “ _You mindless cows are my prey_.”  
    The captain stared wide-eyed into the demon’s empty orbs.  
    The creature’s eyes were so dark against his gaunt face and wan flesh. His veins pumped their iron through him, below his thin membrane, cold as it appeared to be, and the result was a map of blue lines, grey and white skin, a pale scar; and it was the most haunting and terribly beautiful face the pirate had yet seen in his years.  
    And those cold onyx eyes.  
    They were ink released far down in the saltwater. Something horrifying that the most hardened sailor would shirk from.  
    The captain’s lips were parted to utter some snarky retort, but nothing had come out. It was impossible to respond as he stared into those dancing shadows around the mercreature’s pupils. It was the odd draw he’d heard about from other sailors who had seen their companions arrested in the same manner… He could hear the singing…  
    It did not carry through to the eyes, but the quirk of the lips somewhere below those orbs stirred him.  
    He noticed every eye on the ship on him. He’d been staring wordlessly into the void for nearly a minute. “You-” Completely flustered, the pirate was at a loss.  
    The merman struggled no more. The ropes were so thin, he could break free any time he chose. He began to hum. The captain was not sure what it was about that voice, some poisonous gentleness about it, a murderer speaking soothingly to his victim, but suddenly there was little he wanted more than to stay and listen. The odd pinkish spheres landed once again on the merman’s. No other pirate fared any better.  
At the pirates’ poor displays of willpower, the merman leered. It would all be even easier than he had anticipated. They were cattle. They would be slaughtered - except the one sailor.  
    The one who had prayed. “I’ll not follow you anymore!” the mutinous voice hollered over the deck, shattering the tense peace that had lingered. “I’ll not fear Captain Mentium’s power anymore! The demon has its evil influence over him again, look! He’s weak! Get him now, then kill the fish!” With that, he advanced upon Mentium with his own shortsword. Not another one so much as budged. However, a single cry of mutiny was more than enough to wrench the captain from his stupor.  
    Some black force reared up from the deck underneath the man’s feet as the captain tore his gaze away from the humming creature, facing the threat under his nose. “What did you say about me, boy?” he demanded, suddenly enraged as the music faded. His crew should never see him in weakness. The Protestant hastily retreated, knowing what the shadow meant.  
    “No, God, please…”  
    “God doesn’t like disloyalty, so I hear.” Teeth bared as a fist of darkness rose up and clenched around the singular sailor, raising him off the deck, its shape so difficult to distinguish as the Christian was flung onto the hardwood with enough force to splinter the floor around him. He groaned, unable to move. His ribs were broken, the shoulder he landed on shattered. The merman watched silently, thoroughly amused and only a little jealous of the human’s power.  
    Or, perhaps it was not a human.  
    The man began to scream, reaching out feebly to his mates as the hand manifested again and began to smother him, but the sound only lasted a moment, for the shadow covered his nose and mouth. He suffocated as he was pressed into the ground, and the man finally died without a sound. The hand disappeared.  
    The cold-hearted captain turned back to the merman as two members of the crew wordlessly picked the corpse up and flung it over the edge. Mermaid hunting was thus far not the glorious thing they had imagined. “You. You’ll not take control of me again, seawitch.” He straightened up, the fury turning into something more controlled and severe, but which mimicked happiness. The wry smile accompanied the drawing of a pistol, pointed at the creature’s eye.

    He contemplated how he would deal with the merman. If he was to interrogate it, it would have to be in private. It occurred to him that he did not want the thing seeing his men revolting. But whatever happened, the creature must not sing.  
    The ropes, frail as they were, were squeezed into nothing by a small host of dark little forms. The merman’s three-pronged tail slapped at the deck and his clawed fingers dug into the floor when he pushed himself upright, making the majority of the crew flinch. “Why have you released me? It seems counter-intuitive, given what you claim to seek,” he hissed, well-aware of the gunmen who still stood ready. He knew he was too far from the railing to make it over quickly enough.  
    “We won’t be talking here.”  
    “Captain, what do you mean?” his little first mate questioned. She was tiny, grimy, and tough as a nail. Dark brown hair fell long and unkempt over her shoulders and the face that, while she held no care for anyone else, displayed her obvious worry for him. He hadn’t noticed she was right there.  
    He stared at her a moment, then announced to the crew, “I’m taking the creature ashore! And you will wait here, else the lot of you will perish in the water.” No dirty head spoke up in opposition, so he turned back to the merman, tucking his pistol back into the holster at his hip.  
    The monster by now looked quite at ease. His jaded gaze rested on nothing but the captain, and Mentium knew he hadn’t looked away yet. “You’ll be taking me ashore, all by your foolish self?” He opened his mouth in a sneer as he was advanced upon, the spines on his back quivering as his tail flicked in warning. When the human did not stop his cautious progression, he made as if to lunge forward; the result of this was his pinning to the ground a second time by the enormous fist earlier summoned. He thrashed under the pressure, releasing a furious screech.  
    Three pirates went to lower a longboat, grabbing up spare rope not yet decimated by the captain or his resistant prey. “Captain, please, sir,” the girl pleaded again, but he paid her no mind, stooping to sling the mostly contained merman over his shoulder, which served to infuriate it further. “Sir, I don’ want yer bones to be decoratin’ him like the other sailors’!”  
    “No, Captain, we wouldn’t want that,” the merman hissed into his back, digging his claws into Mentium’s coat and battering at the man’s front with his tail, slicing up his shins with the blade on his tail, struggling within the little wiggle room he had. However, as quickly as the injuries faded, they made little impact.  
    The captain wrestled the merman into the longboat and forced him down into the bottom, where other crew members roped him down below the seats, arms tied up to a chair above him and tail lashed down in the length of the boat. The creature was nothing but manic throughout the process, spitting at the captain in an Eastern language.  
    “The Devilfish’s dangerous, Captain!” the girl cried out.  
    “Quiet, Sunny!” he roared in response, struggling to maintain the concentration needed to continue pinning the monster. The ropes made so little difference.  
    The longboat now hung over the side, oars sliding out and raising of their own accord. It rocked wildly in the air from the merman’s thrashing, threatened to tip. The ropes wore threadbare too quickly as the boat was lowered according to Mentium’s signal. The man himself squatted low in the boat, straddling the creature’s tail, head bowed, knuckles white for gripping the sides of the boat so hard as he tried only to stay in. When he finally felt the impact of hitting the water, he relaxed his hold on the merman just enough to think of rowing. He exhaled, removing his hat, but staying low in the boat. As he let up on the sea creature, its efforts slowed until they ceased altogether. Even if it could get its tail free, it knew it had to way of freeing its hands at the moment, and the human still had a gun.

    “Given up yet, monster?” he questioned the merman softly as they neared the shore.  
    The last twenty minutes spent rowing steadily towards the shore had been mostly quiet, with only the occasional twitch from the creature. The captain had been beginning to wonder if it was dying from being kept out of the water so long, especially after expending so much energy.  
     _“Y e s. . .”_  
    His eyes widened in surprise at the unexpected answer, landing on the creature’s pitiful visage. The beautiful thing looked so exhausted, so drained from its exertions. He could tell it needed water, but not now. He could not let it have anything before they reached the shore. But…  
    He sat up on one of the seats over the tail, once again looking into the dark gemstone eyes. Hypnotizing, they were. The tail twitched feebly under him. A gentle thrum of a little hum filled the air around them, the merman’s chest rising and falling as it breathed to feed music. The poor thing needed water.  
    Sympathy flooded his mind, and without thinking he was releasing the sea monster, cutting the ropes, loosing its arms, he was such a handsome merman, he shouldn’t be trapped, bound up like this-  
He was too far gone to realize his mistake. Trapped under the siren’s spell, he allowed himself to free the deadly creature, and the creature hesitated not a moment.  
    Immediately, the boat began to rock as it burst from its bonds. A triumphant grin spread over its face as the song ceased and the wood began to splinter. A seat burst from its niche in the wood when the tail yanked itself out, scratching Mentium once again, but he hardly noticed. He hardly noticed even when the merman grabbed a fistful of his dark hair, when he was dragged over the side; he could only marvel at the creature’s power, forgetting his own.  
    Then he was down, and icy brine filled his nose and mouth, and once again he was fighting. This time, however, the captain was on the defensive. As his heavy and waterlogged coat bore him down, the merman dragged him along through the water with no thought to his inability to breathe. The sea was shallower here, too, and the sea creature’s convolutions stirred up sharp rocks and shells from the bottom, and these scratched and smacked at the pirate. The captain screamed, but all it accomplished was to empty his lungs and allow more water in as a torrent of bubbles rushed up from where he was towed along below. Within a minute and a half, the man passed out.

    He woke up again in a shallow pool, only an inch or so deep. It was no peaceful waking. He bolted upright after an elbow was driven into his abdomen and saltwater gushed out of his mouth, and he sat spluttering and coughing, his face flushed, starved for oxygen. He was soaked and shivering in his trousers and cream jabot shirt, and all his boots did was hold more water. He saw his navy coat was in a heap a few feet away, along with his now useless pistol. The merman was directly in front of him, reeling back after the hard blow he’d delivered.  
    The captain’s hand went to his forehead and he closed his eyes, recovering his breath and trying to make his vision stop swimming. A migraine threatened, but the soothing tannin water eased the pain. It smelled sweet and clean. It was even sweeter when he ignored the bones. There were piles of them around, seeming mountains from his hard seat in the pool. But they were so easy to forget just by looking at the beautiful creature opposite him.  
    It summoned his wretched stare with a whispered word, and suddenly he could not look away as it leaned in.  
    As he leaned in.  
    “…Why haven’t you killed me, demon?” he inquired, with an uncharacteristic hesitance, averting his eyes to the best of his ability.  
    The creature did not respond, but rather put a hand out to the captain’s face. His cold fingers were webbed, the sharp tips lightly scraping the human’s cheek.  
    “Why am I not dead?”  
    A faint frown interrupted the merman’s blank expression, and he put some pressure on the blades he possessed. Two drops of crimson rolled from two punctures down Mentium’s jaw and dripped into the sea. _“You should not insist on things you do no want.”_ He stopped digging his claws in, rather sweeping the pirate backwards and onto his back with his tail as the small incisions vanished. The scales were sharp, through the thin shirt, and tore both it and his pale skin. The spiked barb at the very tip of the scintillating grey tail threatened his heart when the merman leaned over his prey and placed his talons now at the human’s throat.  
    His gaze, thinly veiled by the wet dark hair that fell over them, bore into Mentium’s eyes, snatching away the man’s breath he had only just reclaimed. “ _What is that power you possess, human?”_ the creature hummed soothingly, trying to keep the irritation from his voice and his manner.  
    “-Please, what is your name?” the pirate begged. It was so easy to fall under the entrancing enchantment of a siren. The most headstrong sailor would crumble; a violent and impulsive pirate captain was no better.  
    His obsidian eyes narrowed in annoyance, but he acquiesced. “ _I am Harikoto Takeo, the last of my clan._ ”  
    “Harikoto…” He in no way struggled in the merman’s hold, rather placing his hand over the sea monster’s at his throat. It was so strange, how every sailor fell apart like this for him.  
    The merman looked with some concoction of disbelief, disgust, and unadulterated pride at what his abilities could reduce a grown man to: a sniveling, desperate little animal with no self-control and no will for self-preservation. All they wanted was him. They would die for him. Any of them. There was hilarity in it, and no small amount of irony. He parted his lips to utter some small little laugh, but the action was interrupted by a surge of energy below him.  
    Infatuation had fallen over the captain. The barbed tail was brushed away and slammed against the ground, the merman turned over so that he was, for the third time today, pinned supine. Mentium hovered over him, enamored, lost in his vision of the merman. His eyes were wide and his mouth was open. His own thin face was handsome in its own way, when its anger was spent, and when in the absence of fury there was love, it was much more appealing.  
    For now, there was at least lust.  
    The man took in every detail of the merman’s body, noticing everything he had not before. The way those terrible eyes slanted a tad more than was human. When he could look away, the angular and firm jawline. The creature’s hair seemed soft when it began to dry, and the pirate shamelessly confirmed this when he ran a lock of it between his fingers. At the same time, his left hand stroked down the merman’s torso, feeling the hard muscles on his chest, the prominent ridges of his ribs, his abdomen-  
    Other things had been on the merman’s mind, but a tingle ran through him at the human’s touch. _“Tell me what your power is_ ,” he murmured, still insisting on his point.  
    Mentium ignored his words, instead admiring his body. “You are so beautiful…”  
    “ _Listen to me, human.”_  
    The captain heeded no better this time than the last, bowing low to the slender frame below him. He met his ear with the other’s beating heart, listening to it: music of his own.  
     _“You will not defy me.”_  
    But nothing prevented the captain from pressing a kiss over the merman’s heart; then, something stronger affected the sea monster. Fear, hatred of humans, and jealousy all drove him, and with no warning the captain’s head was cracked on the stone and his scream rang out. Blood swirled through the water now. The demon raked his claws down Mentium’s front, extracting another moan of pain. The scales of his tail chafed the human’s legs. The spines on his arms scratched, like scalpels, precise lines down the pirate’s arms. The injuries affected him little, however, and he healed them as quickly as those to his legs before.  
    The merman saw, and he wanted it. _“I want your power for my own. You will give it to me.”_  
    The pirate stared into the merman’s eyes for a long while, pretending to think in his intoxicated mind though the decision was already made. “I think you can convince me.”  
    The pretenses of gentleness were abandoned, and Harikoto drew the pirate back into the ocean with an ominous song on his pale, scarred lips. The icy salt water closed over Mentium’s head, swallowing his breath and his willpower. He was surrendered to the demon’s magic and his whims.  
    And then they fucked.  
    Don’t ask how, but they did.  
    I wanted to say I assumed Harikoto would be a power bottom or some shit, but nah man, he’d probably top just because I don’t think mermen have anuses. I don’t think, anyway. Don't quote me on that.

THE END

 

**Author's Note:**

> Lemme know if you really, really want a proper ending! ;P


End file.
